My own impression after seeing it working and the work it has done, after seeing the difficulties it has conquered, the districts it has opened up, the towns it has brought into being, is that, as an organization, the Canadian Pacific Railway is great, not merely as a trading concern, but as an Empire-building factor. Its vision has been big beyond its own needs, and the Dominion today owes not a little to the great men of the C.P.R., who were big-minded enough to plan, not only for themselves, but also for all Canada.
And the big men are still alive. In Quebec we had the good fortune to meet Lord Shaughnessy, whose acute mind was the very soul of the C.P.R. until he retired from the Presidency a short time ago, and Mr. Edward W. Beatty, who has succeeded him.
Lord Shaughnessy may be a retired lion, but he is by no means a dead one. A quiet man of powerful silences, whose eyes can be ruthless, and his lips wise. A man who appears disembodied on first introduction, for one overlooks the rest of him under the domination of his head and eyes.
The best description of Mr. Beatty lies in the first question one wants to ask him, which is, "Are you any relation to the Admiral?"
The likeness is so remarkable that one is sure it cannot be accidental. It is accidental, and therefore more remarkable. It is the Admiral's face down to the least detail of feature, though it is a trifle younger. There is the same neat, jaunty air—there is even the same cock of the hat over the same eye. There is the same sense of compact power concealed by the same spirit of whimsical dare-devilry. There is the same capacity, the same nattiness, the same humanness. There is the same sense of abnormality that a man looking so young should command an organization so enormous, and the same recognition that he is just the man to do it.
Both these men are impressive. They are big men, but then so are all the men who have control in the C.P.R. They are more than that, they can inspire other men with their own big spirit. We met many heads of departments in the C.P.R., and we felt that in all was the same quality. Mr. Calder, as he began, "A. B." as he soon became, was the one we came in contact with most, and he was typical of his service.
"A. B." was not merely our good angel, but our good friend from the first. Not merely did he smooth the way for us, but he made it the jolliest and most cheery way in the world. He is a bundle of strange qualities, all good. He is Puck, with the brain of an administrator. The king of story tellers, with an unfaltering instinct for organization. A poet, and a mimic and a born comedian, plus a will that is never flurried, a diplomacy that never rasps, and a capacity for the routine of railway work that is—C.P.R. A man of big heart, big humanness, and big ability, whom we all loved and valued from the first meeting.
And, over all, he is a C.P.R. man, the type of man that organization finds service for, and is best served by them; an example that did most to impress us with a sense of the organization's greatness.
II
If I have written much concerning the C.P.R., it is because I feel that, under the personality of His Royal Highness himself, the success of the tour owes much to the care and efficiency that organization exerted throughout its course, and also because for three months the C.P.R. train was our home and the backbone of everything we did. If you like, that is the chief tribute to the organization. We spent three months confined more or less to a single carriage; we travelled over all kinds of line and country, and under all manner of conditions; and after those three long months we left the train still impressed by the C.P.R., still warm in our friendship for it—perhaps, indeed, warmer in our regard.